Patrick Bond

June 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal— A ‘think tank’ is sometimes a group of people paid to think, by the people who control the tanks (as Naomi Klein once remarked).
Here in Johannesburg, one of South Africa’s highest-profile
intellectual vehicles appears to be a victim of drunken driving by
scholars from whom we otherwise expect much stronger political
navigation skills.

June 21, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewalreposted from Review of African Political Economy — In Towards a Broader Theory of Imperialism
Patrick Bond joins in the debate between John Smith and David Harvey on
roape.net over the direction of imperialism today. He criticizes both
debaters for overlooking the category of sub-imperialism, a concept that
can indeed help clarify some issues. But in stressing this and other
important matters like environmental destruction and gender oppression,
Bond sidesteps the major issue over which Smith challenges Harvey: what
is the reality of imperialism today? Is it so different from the system
described and analyzed by Lenin, Luxemburg and other Marxists a century
ago that the traditional imperialist powers no longer drain value from
the resources and labor of most of the world?

Bond is more critical of Smith than of
Harvey, since he disparages Smith’s ‘old fashioned binary of oppressed
and oppressor nations,’ just as Harvey rejects Smith’s ‘fixed, rigid
theory of imperialism.’ But in avoiding the key issue Bond is in effect
covering for Harvey: focusing on the theory of sub-imperialism serves to
obscure the untenability of Harvey’s position on imperialism itself.

April 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Review of African Political Economy —Two leading critics of imperialism – John Smith and David Harvey – have recently fought bitterly on roape.net on over how to interpret geographically-shifting processes of super-exploitation. The risk is that they obscure crucial features of their joint wrath: the unjust accumulation processes and geopolitics that enrich the wealthy and despoil the world environment.

February 28, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Cyril Ramaphosa’s
soft-coup firing of Jacob Zuma from the South African presidency
on February 14, after nearly nine years in power and a
humiliating struggle to avoid resigning, has contradictory local
and geopolitical implications. Society’s general applause at
seeing Zuma’s rear end resonates loudly, but concerns
immediately arise about the new president’s neo-liberal,
pro-corporate tendencies, and indeed his legacy of financial
corruption and class war against workers. There is still a lack
of closure on the 2012 Marikana Massacre, in spite of his
February 20 speech to parliament pledging atonement. New
legislation Ramaphosa supports will limit the right to strike,
while the new budget has cuts and tax increases that hurt the poorest.

August 31, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal— The Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa summit in Xiamen from September 3-5
is already inscribed with high tension thanks to Sino-Indian border
conflicts. But regardless of a welcome new peace deal, centrifugal
forces within the fast-whirling world economy threaten to divide the
BRICS. South Africa, which plays host to the BRICS in 2018, is already a
victim of these trends – even as President Jacob Zuma continues to use
the bloc as a primary crutch in his so-called “anti-imperialist”
(talk-left walk-right) political survival kit.

May 3, 2017 –– Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal–– At a time when US and South African presidents Donald Trump and Jacob Zuma personify controversies over crony capitalism, corruption, populist rhetoric and self-serving economic strategies, will big business calm down the politicians – or just egg them on?

April 28, 2017 —Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal— On South Africa’s political left, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party dominated recent news by leading a mass march on President Jacob Zuma’s office in Pretoria, following a government power shift seen as amplifying corruption. The move also catalysed a ‘junk’ rating by two neoliberal credit ratings agencies. And an impeachment process on the immediate horizon represents the first real parliamentary threat to Zuma’s eight-year reign.

February 14, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal— South Africa’s two main warring political blocs – the forces of Fiscal Patronage (‘Zuptas!’ in local parlance, referring to the immigrant Gupta family’s curious influence over the president’s family and government) versus the forces of Fiscal Prudence (‘Treasury neoliberals!’ to critics) – are still represented by two men who have begun to stumble on terrain potholed by what a Donald Trump aid terms ‘alternative facts.’

January 23, 2017 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – The forces arrayed against Donald Trump’s presidency and neo-fascist movement range from the Central Intelligence Agency to oppressed minorities, and will soon encompass the whole world once his climate change threats are carried out. From above, conflicts will continue with moderate Republicans, Democratic Party elites, so-called Deep State opponents including neoconservative factions of the military, exporting companies concerned about protectionism, and deficit hawks worried about excess spending on filthy-Keynesian infrastructure.

January 9, 2017 –– Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal –– The weeks following an underwhelming Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) mid-September summit in Goa and the United States presidential election in November have unveiled ever-widening contradictions. Thanks to blatant corruption, presidential delegitimation has reached unprecedented levels in both Brazil and South Africa, while ruling-party religious degeneracy in India also included an extraordinary bout of local currency mismanagement. And sudden new foreign-policy divergences may wreak havoc in China and Russia. The BRICS bloc’s relations could well destabilise to the breaking point.

December 9, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Standard&Poors (S&P) gave South Africa a fearful few hours of anticipation last Friday, just after dust from the political windstorm of the prior week settled. The agency downgraded the government’s securities that are denominated in the local currency (the rand) although refrained from the feared junk status on international securities. It was a moment for the ruling business and political party elites’ introspection, but in heaving a sigh of relief they are not looking far enough.

November 3, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — This week could well be remembered as South Africa’s most important political inflection point since the September 2008 ousting of sitting President Thabo Mbeki by his own party, the African National Congress (ANC). His main tormenter then was Jacob Zuma, who – following a brief handover period – has ruled the country in an increasingly dubious manner since May 2009.

But several contradictions have exploded in Zuma’s face. Political opponents from across the spectrum, radical university students and his own party’s establishment smell the blood, as Zuma’s fabled patronage system is now in the spotlight, apparently in tatters.

Zuma just suffered two major legal defeats: a fumbled state attack on Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan which was humiliatingly withdrawn by an incompetent prosecutor on Monday following a national outcry; and Wednesday’s release of the public protector’s State of Capturereport on the Zuma family’s corrupt relationships, a report the president and two cabinet colleagues unsuccessfully attempt to quash.

October 14, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — A Brazilian leader’s faux pas spoke volumes about the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) heads of state summit underway in Goa this weekend. The country’s foreign minister (and occasional presidential candidate) José Serra told an interviewer last month that the BRICS included Argentina. And as he stumbled while spelling out the acronym, Serra also had to be prompted to recall that South Africa is a member (because in English it is the “S” in BRICS, but in Portuguese the country is “Africa do Sul”).

June 23, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Last week the South African Reserve Bank Quarterly Bulletin confirmed that foreign corporations are milking the economy, drawing away profits far faster than they are reinvested or than local firms bring home offsetting profits from abroad. Can anything be done to stop the hemorrhaging?

May 29, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- On May 12, Brazil’s democratic government, led by the Workers’ Party (PT), was the victim of a coup. What will the other BRICS countries (Russia, India, China, and South Africa) do?

May 19, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- From May 11-13, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Africa summit in Kigali, Rwanda reinforced extractive-industry and high-tech myths. The gathering unveiled the 1%’s elite’s exuberant imagination and its lack of exposure to the continent’s harsh economic realities. As an antidote, grassroots protesters all over Africa are questioning the logic of export-led ‘growth’ and renewed fiscal austerity, instead demanding that policies meet their basic needs.

South African students protest outside the parliament precinct before forcing their way through the gates of parliament on October 21, 2015 in Cape Town, South Africa.

By Patrick Bond

April 6, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project -- A wedge is being quickly driven through Pretoria's political elite, splitting even those who worked closely in the murky 1980s Durban spy scene during the fight against apartheid. Amongst the victims are vast numbers of poor people beginning to bear the brunt of the diverse shakeouts in the ongoing confrontation now underway between the country's two most powerful 21st century politicians: President Jacob Zuma and his predecessor Thabo Mbeki. That battle began in 2005, when Mbeki fired then-Deputy President Zuma following a corruption conviction against a long-time Zuma associate.

The revival of their duel comes at a very tense time in South Africa. Student, worker and community protests intensified last month after the December-January summer break. Repeated currency crashes left a 30 per cent decline in value over the past year, prompting the country's financiers and upper-middle class commentariat to universally applaud Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan for maintaining low-grade austerity. A ‘junk’ label by international credit rating agencies, one which appears imminent and will lead to faster capital flight, remains an economic threat to this faction.

August 10, 2015 – a version was first published in TeleSUR English, submitted toLinks International Journal of Socialist Renewalby the author -- Foreign direct investment (FDI)
is always prefaced with the two words
‘much needed”, my colleague Sarah Bracking insisted last week at a Zimbabwe NGO
conference. “Have you ever heard FDI referenced without those two words?” We all shook our heads.